Inside Woven Capital: The Playbook for Growth-Stage Venturing
Nicole LeBlanc, Partner at Toyota’s growth-stage fund, on launching an $800M second fund and getting startups through a global automaker.
With Nicole LeBlanc
From The Corporate Venturing Podcast, brought to you by Open Road Ventures
4 things this conversation gets into
- 01Why Woven Capital launched an $800M second fund now
- 02Early versus growth stage, and how deal flow passes between them
- 03Portfolio success: guiding startups through Toyota’s business units
- 04Why a deal has to stand on its own financially first
Nicole LeBlanc is a Partner at Woven Capital, Toyota's growth-stage venture fund, which manages a combined 1.6 billion dollars across two funds. She and her team sit at the junction where startups move from moving fast and breaking things to global deployment, including the fund's new 800 million dollar Fund 2.
Davide Ritorto is a management engineer from Italy with an international MBA, currently working at Lamborghini. He is what some call an intrapreneur, passionate about open innovation and corporate venturing, and driven by curiosity about how things work and how to make them work even better. Through Open Road Ventures he sets out to inspire and inform other innovators, intrapreneurs and dreamers.
He founded Open Road Ventures as a weekly publication on open innovation and corporate venturing, and The Corporate Venturing Podcast grew out of it. He also mentors startups at Motor Valley Accelerator and sits on the Open Innovation Advisory Board at UC Berkeley Haas.
The Corporate Venturing Podcast is made by Open Road Ventures. The Bundl Venture Club is a partner of the show.
Read the full show notes
In this episode, I’m joined by Nicole LeBlanc, Partner at Woven Capital, Toyota’s growth-stage venture fund. Nicole and her team manage a combined $1.6B across two funds, sitting at the critical junction where startups need to move from "move fast and break things" to global deployment.
We explore the launch of their new $800M Fund 2, how they differentiate from early-stage investing, and what it really takes to integrate external innovation into the world’s largest automaker.
In this episode, Nicole shares insights on:
💸 The $800M Signal
Why Woven Capital launched Fund 2 now , doubling down on AI and climate tech , and how in today’s geopolitical environment, corporates bring scale while startups bring the necessary speed.
🤝 Early vs. Growth Stage
The clear distinction between Toyota Ventures (early-stage "cousins") and Woven Capital (growth-stage) , and how they pass deal flow to ensure startups have support from seed to scale.
🧭 The "Portfolio Success" Superpower
Why writing the check is the easy part, and how Woven’s dedicated team guides startups through Toyota’s complex business units so they don’t get lost in the organization.
⚖️ Strategic Value vs. Financial Discipline
How to balance the dual mandate. Nicole explains why a deal must stand on its own financially first—even if the strategic story is perfect—to ensure long-term resilience.
🔋 Real-World Case Study: Weave Grid
A concrete example of how investing in Weave Grid allowed Toyota to solve the "3,000 utilities" problem while giving the startup the validation needed to unlock the rest of the OEM market.
🧠 AI Beyond the Hype
Why she sees AI not just as a buzzword, but as a foundational unlock for logistics, fleet management, and simulation—improving operations rather than just perception.
We close the episode on Nicole’s personal view: why corporate venturing is "not a 9-to-5 job" and why, despite the massive scale and deep tech, success ultimately comes down to human connection.
Resources:• Open Road Ventures Newsletter• Bundl Venture Club
🎧 Follow the podcast for grounded stories and practical lessons from inside the world of Open Innovation and Corporate Venturing.
Keep listening
All episodes
New growth plays, every fortnight.
What is working inside the world’s biggest consumer brands, straight to your inbox.